Archives for March 2019

I was 50 on March 10. It feels like a grand, big milestone, thanks for asking.

Mr. Waffle organised a surprise dinner for me on the night before my birthday and I was totally surprised by the organisation, by the capacity of people I know to keep a secret and by the numbers who turned up clutching presents for me. Even some of my old friends from Brussels came over which was an even bigger surprise. It was lovely. The only real downside is that Mr. Waffle will be 50 next year and I fear that I will never be able to live up to the standard he has set.

Check out his card – purchased in Denmark last summer.

Colleagues from work had a little tea and a present for me as well. All in all, it was quite delightful.

I made an absolute killing on the bunches of flowers front – I love flowers. Although, given that he knew what was to come, Mr. Waffle should probably have restrained me from buying that bunch of tulips on the morning of March 9.

The day itself I spent with my Brussels friends who had travelled over and the day after, Mr. Waffle and I went for a walk in the mountains which was a little chilly but very beautiful.

Perhaps this is the start of the much vaunted 50s where people start to really enjoy themselves as they shake off expectations and just have a good time. On the minus side we went skiing the following week (of which much, much more anon) and, now, a week after our return, my knees have just recovered. I can’t help feeling that dodgy knees has to be a classic 50s experience. Sigh.

March has been a busy month. Mostly good things which I will relate in due course (hold on to your hats), but today has not been great.

At midday, I went to the funeral of the mother of a former colleague. She was an older lady and her youngest child was 45 and while it was sad for them, there was a lovely eulogy that showed a life well lived.

Before that, at 10.30, I went to a very different funeral. A woman who lives on the road who is about the same age as myself was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer three weeks ago. She went to hospital for an operation on Wednesday and she was dead on Thursday. We dropped down to the house yesterday to sympathise. I feel I have seen my fair share of corpses recently (it’s one wake after another here) but this lady looked truly dreadful: yellow and bloated. On Monday, someone saw her running in and out of the house to pack her bag for the hospital and now she is dead. Her daughter is an only child and just 15; when they were all younger, she and my children used to play together. Then yesterday she was there sitting on a chair beside her mother’s body welcoming mourners to the house.

The daughter sings in the pro-cathedral choir and her fellow choristers sang at the funeral mass. As herself whispered to me, “Now that’s a choir.” The readings were different from the usual ones as they were all about someone dying early. It was horribly sad and this afternoon we were all a bit wrung and hung around the house doing very little.

I went down to Cork for the weekend. When I left Dublin on Friday lunch time, it was warm and sunny. Like a fool, I decided it was warm enough to go to Cork without my coat. Honestly, am I nine or forty nine? Normally, I get lifts all the time but for a variety of dull reasons, I had to get myself around without lifts this weekend. This is relevant.

When I got to Cork on Friday evening it was lashing. I cycled glumly to my parents’ house on a Cork bike. My parents’ house is so warm that I had more or less steam dried in about an hour which was just as well as I only had a solitary pair of trousers with me.

The next morning I woke up with a pain in my tooth. This was doubly annoying as I was at the dentist last week. It wasn’t super painful but more numb like when you get an injection. Over the course of the day it spread all around my top teeth in a slightly disturbing development.

On Saturday morning I cycled in to town. Obviously, I could have taken a coat out from my parents’ house but I decided that the weather would hold. I don’t know why I would have decided that and with a certain inevitability I got soaked again on the way back to my parents’ house. As my general mouth pain spread, I began to wonder whether I had given myself Bell’s palsy by recklessly cycling around in the rain without a coat. But it got better over the course of the day and was on both sides so, I decided probably not.

I visited my mother in the nursing home. She was awake and I knew that she recognised me because she looked at me and said, “Your hair is lovely.” This is literally all she said in the hour I was there. This is a long-standing fault line between us. She loves my hair long and I like it to be short; in fact, I think it really needs a cut. I’m glad she’s still in there somewhere in dementia land although the comment annoyed me as it invariably did when she was well, so some patterns seem to survive a great deal of change.

On Saturday night, my sister and I went to the cinema. We drove. Say what you like about the car, it’s good at keeping you dry.

I came back to Dublin early on Sunday morning. I cycled to the station in Cork and got soaked. I dried on the train. Then, I cycled home from the station and got soaked all over again. The rain in Dublin was considerably chillier than the rain in Cork. I arrived home freezing and damp to find that the builders had cut a power line and the heating. Unsatisfactory. Herself filled me a hot water bottle. On the plus side, my tooth pain completely disappeared. I suppose this is what this blog is going to be from now on as I move to my 50s: a litany of mysterious symptoms which come and go with no rhyme or reason.

On Sunday afternoon we went to inspect Dublin’s newest tourist attraction, the Vaults which was ok but more aimed at tourists than locals and probably for a younger crowd. We went off to a mild afternoon birthday celebration for Uncle A where Mr. Waffle dimmed the lights to blow out the candles causing unspeakable terror to my little niece, S. Is it bad that I found that mildly amusing? Herself babysat for them last night and as she went home, her aunt pressed a packet of Marietta biscuits into her hand, “Take these, please, we have to get rid of them, they’re like crack cocaine for S.”

When we got home we lit fires to try to keep us warm. It snowed outside. Overall, damp and chilly.

Michael is now taller than me as well. I suppose it’s only a question of time before Herself passes me out.

Daniel was singing in a choral evening organised by the Dublin archdiocese last week. There were about 600 children from a range of different schools there the night we went all wearing their school uniforms. Mr. Waffle said that it felt like a kilt convention. Prize for most hideous uniform must go to the girls wearing lemon jumpers and matching kilts. I am indebted to herself for letting me know that they change colours every two years depending what year they are in and pointing me to the rainbow of colours up in the balcony. I bet they’re glad when they move on from lemon.

The evangelical modern uptempo songs preferred by the organisers do not appeal to me but Daniel quite enjoyed it as did his sister. She did not need to have recourse to her choice of reading for the evening (really, who, who, is this child?).

Michael, however, continued reading his collected Sherlock Holmes almost throughout.

He did pause in his reading to listen to his brother to read out a long passage on stage. I have to say Daniel read really, really well. There must have been a thousand people in the auditorium between performers and their loving relatives and he read fluently and clearly with emphasis in all the right places and didn’t seem even slightly nervous. He does not get that gift from me.

Afterwards the school nun said to me, “Wasn’t Daniel wonderful?” I said that he was and that I had already praised him. She said that he needed affirmation. “There is,” she added, “something self-serving about praise.” The children all love her but I tell you, people, she sees right through me. In the car on the way home, Mr. Waffle said, “I didn’t understand what Sr M meant about the difference between praise and affirmation.” Herself replied, “Mum praises, you affirm.” Of course, he is the child of hippies.